The `Theatre of the Absurd' has become a familiar term to describe a group of radical European playwrights - writers such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter - whose dark, funny and humane dramas wrestled profoundly with the meaningless absurdity of the human condition.
Now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series with a new preface by Marvin Carlson, The Theatre of the Absurd remains to this day a clear-eyed work of criticism on a compelling period of European writing..
It is a testament to the power and insight of Martin Esslin's landmark work, originally published in 1961, that its title should enter the English language in the way that it has.
The `Theatre of the Absurd' has become a familiar term to describe a group of radical European playwrights - writers such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter - whose dark, funny and humane dramas wrestled profoundly with the meaningless absurdity of the human condition